


dream bubbles

by nanrea



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Drabble Collection, Gen, Oneshot collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 08:16:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6846652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanrea/pseuds/nanrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>one shots and story fragments for homestuck. each one generally can stand alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It started with a hand. Legendary prankster in his own mind John (fucking) Egbert decided to take the hand he’d recently lost in an unfortunate hammer accident and mummify it by immersing it in salt. By the time the hand was sufficiently dessicated to survive what he had planned for it, Jade had grown him a replacement, and in honor of the surgery that would graft it onto his arm he planted the mummified hand in Dave and Jade’s shared apartment (someday maybe they’ll get Karkat to move in with them and make it official). Naturally enough it was Terezi who discovered it while visiting her favorite coolkid moirail, hidden carefully amongst the couch cushions of Dave’s shitty sofa, sniffing it out a day after John had left for home, new hand successfully grafted onto his arm and weirdly free of callouses.

(the most amazing thing about new appendages, John says, is how much they feel, hypersensitive and shiny and so weirdly smooth!)

Terezi was happy to tell John about it later, Dave’s ridiculous little shriek when she’d pulled the mysterious lump out from behind his back. She didn’t tell John about the fact that she’d put his present in his coffee jar, buried under the grounds, though he found out about that a week later while making his morning brew.

This could only mean one thing.

War.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the idea for this came from a chat session, the transcript of which is on my tumblr [here.](http://proserpine-in-phases.tumblr.com/post/46854465929/the-best-au-ever-or-the-saga-of-the-mummified) I remain fond of the concept but ahh I don't feel up to writing a prank war, I am no good at pranks -_-
> 
> also this is when I started shipping john♠terezi, what a good ship.


	2. we make great pets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxy and Karkat talk about cats. This was written back before the Beta Kids had reached the B-2 session so it basically is an au.

Pets, no seriously. What even. Humans are close enough to trolls in appearance that sometimes you forget they are aliens, even though their hornlessness and various tones of earthy colorings varying from pale to dark sometimes threw you into the Uncanny Valley right next to the soul bots and corpses.

Pets, though. What even. You’re repeating yourself, but who even fucking cares? Pets. What sort of perversion in upbringing would make them even consider taking on such a relationship with a lusus that they do ALL the support? It boggles your mind.

Roxy’s bizarrely black little four eyed meowbeast monster arches itself against your leg, adding even more to the list of what the hell ever. Black! What kind of lusus is black? And so small? It blinked its four eyes at you and mewled, paws on your knees.

“What the fuck ever,” you mutter, stooping to pick it up. It settles into your arms, rumbling like some kind of tiny motor.

“Wow,” Roxy says from behind you. Of all the new humans you’ve met lately, she has been the most friendly and open. Alt-Strider views all three of you with naked suspicion, the English ass hole just keeps threatening you with fisticuffs, and Jane always leaves the area whenever she sees a troll approaching. Completely different from Jade and John’s fucking clingy natures, or Rose’s calm affection and Dave’s nonstop terrible rap (you refuse to admit that Dave’s constant rapping was comfortingly enough like Gamzee’s that you didn’t mind it. You might have been the only person on the meteor who didn’t mind it) You suppose after years of pink glittery subjugation you couldn’t blame them for not trusting you, even though you were the creators of their stupid universe and all.

The meowbeast purring away in your arms stretches a paw out across your elbow and closes its eyes.

Roxy leans in real close, looking at her bizarre black lusus. “I’ve never seen, uh … Zazzerpan? Yeah, let’s go with that. I’ve never seen Zazzerpan be so chill with anyone before.” She reaches over and scratches its chin.

You are so not up for anyone in your personal space like this, but it is her lusus you’ve got in your arms. “This thing keeps following me around,” you mutter. “I don’t know why.” Fuck, it’s digging its back claws into your arm.

“Hey, you’re Karkat, right? Jade keeps calling you the shouty one?”

You shrug, one shoulder lifting and dropping. You don’t know what to think about them, either, Jade or John. In three years’ separation they shot up like weeds, outstripping everyone in their search for height. John is probably as tall as Gamzee, now, not that you’ve seen that clown often enough to judge, failure of a moirail that you are, and Jade is even taller than Dave, whose shoulders you might be level with if you gave up on slouching. Why the fuck to humans have to be so tall? Even Roxy, the shortest of them all, has a couple inches on you.

Even TEREZI has gotten taller than you, though it’s all in her horns, you keep telling yourself. Another sore spot. What the fuck ever.

Roxy tugs at the cowl of her stupid godtier outfit (yet another sore spot, that all these losers managed to reach that shallow measure of success) and looks you up and down. Why?

“You guys aren’t what I imagined trolls would look like, you know,” she says.

Yeah, okay. “What the fuck?” You cut straight to the chase. Not even going to prevaricate on that one.

“Well, I mean, the Condesce is so, just, uh, you know. With the pink and the glitter and the clowns and all that? And you guys, well. I mean, Terezi’s got that licking thing, I don’t even know what to say about that, her calling me DELICIOUS BLUEBERRY, what the hell, and Kanaya being all over mom - I mean Rose, uh …” she stumbles to a verbal halt under your fulminating (you hope it’s fulminating, what the hell does that even mean, fuck) glare.

“And well, I guess all these troll sprites-”

You turn to stare at the ground. You’d rather not think about what Gamzee had done to all your friends. Just another sign of your failure as a leader or some shit, you’re sure.

“Fefetasprite is my babe! But that Erisol guy.”

“Yes, I’m sure fusing together the souls of the two biggest ass holes I ever met sounded just fucking wonderful to Gamzee’s pan rotted psyche,” you interupt. You don’t need to be told what a giant wad of failure Sollux and Eridan became when literally joined together. They were bad enough separate. You try not to tear up. Fuck knows why the humans are so weirded out by colored ocular secretions. Their bizarre clear salt water is creepy enough they don’t need to be judging proper tears.

“Uh.” She doesn’t seem to know where to go with that. Not that you do either. And this black lusus thing still purring in your arms is starting to get heavy. It turns its head and looks up at you with its main eyes, the fucked up smaller eyes still closed. What, you wonder.

What the fuck do you want?

You’re not sure who you’re addressing that question to.

Roxy doesn’t seem willing to let this stupid conversation die in peace though. You hadn’t really understood the idea of human genetic inheritance until you met Roxy Lalonde: she had the rambling conversational skills of Dave and the same inability to let things go as Rose.

If it weren’t for this goddamned purrbeast snuggling into your arms and the complete lack of anywhere to go anyway on this fucking hole pocked rock of a planet you’d have absconded ages ago, you swear. Jane’s planet is a desolate waste that makes you almost long for the horrifying rivers of blood on your own world.

Though you’d be damned if you’d ever admit that out loud.

Anyway.

Roxy’s black lusus thing bumps its head against your chin. Why? It does it again. Its purring seems to get louder as it goes back to staring at you.

“What is it with this thing, anyway?” you ask. Growl might be a more accurate description, you guess. Eh. Semantics.

“It likes you,” she says, as if that should be obvious. “But listen, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What, you had a fucking point all along? I’m shocked, seriously, look at my shocked face.”

She doesn’t oblige you by looking at your shocked face. In her defense, you don’t actually look very shocked. She is instead staring out at one of those ridiculously colorful balloons that rise out of Jane’s land, watching it sink back down.

“I grew up knowing that the Condesce destroyed my species because we weren’t enough like trolls,” she addresses the distant balloon. “It’s just strange, meeting some actual trolls, finally. Learning what she was trying to remake.”

You snort. “She probably wasn’t trying to recreate a bunch of dipshit adolescents who succeeded better at killing each other than we did at anything else. Don’t look at us for the fucking goal here.”

“I don’t know, she does seem to have a real fondness for clowns,” Roxy says.

You can't work up the energy to be angry.


	3. interspecies diplomacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a homestuck au where Jane Crocker is a Diplomat for one empire confronting the errant Heiress of another.

The looming threat of the Alternian Empire’s third Armada was never far from Jane Crocker’s mind. As the Heiress to the Crocker Interplanetary Corporation she had interests on nearly every planet in the Farwellian United Interspecies Co-operative Alliance, or the Interstellar Clusterfuck, as Dirk liked to call it. She could only hope he could restrain his tongue in this negotiation with the leader of the Armada. Intelligence didn’t have much information on either the Empire or the leader of the Armada, just that they swept through the galaxy like a horde of locust, and negotiations with any species was reportedly rare. The refugee fleets the FUICA had absorbed over the past century have given only the impression that the empire was vast, and voracious.

Jane steeled her shoulders and looked toward the view ports over that same armada. At the port already stood her adviser on interspecies affairs, Rose Lalonde.

“Anything to report?” Jane asked as she drew close.

“Well, from what I have gathered from the kt’cheeethalan,” the alien word slid far too smoothly from Lalonde’s lips, “the Alternians rarely gather in large groups, generally doing so only in preparation for a hostile invasion. It seems that within the borders of their empire their ships tend only to travel singly. My sources on the border say they seem to make easy marks alone, but are formidable given the firepower even simple transports - presumably they are transports- are given to carry.”

“So this is an invasion fleet.”

“Oddly, no. If it were an invasion fleet, they would have attacked already, not signalled negotiations.”

“Hmm.”

“As primary representative for the CIC and the FUICA,” Lalonde pronounced each acronym as if it were a word, sic, fuica, “you have full power to declare hostile intent, but I would warn against it for now.”

Jane nodded. “That seems the more wise approach until we find out what they want.”

———

Feferi gazed out at the alien smorgasbord of ships and sighed. They hadn’t attacked, yet, which was a good sign. Beside her, Eridan shifted impatiently from foot to foot.

“What exactly are we tryin to accomplish here, Fef?” He tugged at his scarf. “Why can’t we just wipe them out and-”

“No! We need this alliance if we’re going to succeed in overthrowing the Condesce!” She paid no attention to the heads turning toward them. The bridge was full of her loyal crew: they knew the plan.

“Yeah, but, Fef, a show of force would let them know who’s boss here.”

“You are missing the point here, Eridan,” Terezi said from behind them, with a toothy grin. “This Alliance is vast, almost as vast as the Empress’s reach, and we know almost nothing of them except that they are willing to take in those that flee from us. We are not very good at much beyond invasion! But these aliens can form bonds! Hunt in packs! Organize many species under a single banner! They will give us necessary power if we can join with them!”

Feferi nodded, turning to face the bridge crew. “Diplomacy will be key to our success! We must gain sanctuary with these aliens, win them over to our side. Shorely they sea the threat the Empire already poses. That shall be our bargaining ship!”

——-

Communication with a species that rarely had need to speak with another was more difficult than it should be, Jane decided the third time their radio signal was ignored. She knew they had subether communications for long range, but it seemed crazy to use such a high power signal for such small distances. The Alternian Armada stood in chaotic swarms less than a lightminute away from the Crockercorp brand Alliance Emissary vessel and its orderly ranks of military back up. Surely they could stand the lag?

She gave a sigh. She couldn’t stop fidgeting, and Rose Lalonde’s utter stillness next to her made her feel even more restless. She missed Roxy’s far more tactile brand of friendship, though Rose’s cousin’s particular skills were better put to use some place other than on an emissary vessel.

Technically, she was also too important to be out on an emissary vessel so far from Crockercorp headquarters, but. Once in a millenium contacts with Alien Empires were only once in a millenium chances, after all.

Besides, she was just one of the heirs and junior VPs of the corporation. She had three other co-heirs besides, in her cousins Jade and John, and Jake of course. But there was only one super hacker with an actual lead on feasible teleportation technology, and she was needed at the labs.

This waiting was killing her, though. She turned to Rose.

“Do you think we should sent a raft or something? Or a light signal? They don’t seem to be receiving our hails.”

Rose tilted her head. “It’s nearly impossible to know what they would consider an aggressive move. In fact, from what I’ve gathered, almost any move up to and including existing is construed as an offensive move to the Alternians.”

“Gah, this is so frustrating! What if they’re waiting for us to contact them?” She turned to the Captain of the ship, a mostly honorary title when she was vice president of the company that owned it, and said, “Do we have any short range vessels available to make an attempt at SOME sort of successful communication?”

“Ah, yes, ma’am,” the captain said, snapping to startled attention. “But no volunteers to pilot one, most likely.”

“Ch.” She turned back to the view port. “I’d go if I thought you’d let me,” she muttered.

Beside her, Rose smirked.

———

“This is an insult,” Eridan growled, pacing back and forth at the front of the bridge. “They’re ignorin us, Fef! We can’t just let this stand! We’re fuckin Royalty, here.”

Feferi turned from her vigil of watching the Alliance fleet to survey her crew. Terezi was seated at her post, nervously dabbing her tongue on her screen periodically, blank red eyes half closed. At the navigation controls, Aranea was tapping at her console, a mindless, purposeless rhythm with nowhere to go. On the other side of her Kanaya was studying her receiver screens, awaiting any response from the aliens on the light pulse, and signalling a lack of response.

“We’ll have to send a vessel,” Fefeeri said at length. “I will have to go.”

“What? Fef!” Eridan was the first to protest, though he was quickly followed by the others.

Terezi alone didn’t say a word. A slow grin began to spread on Feferi’s face as she watched her senior strategist consider the angles.

“It is a sound idea!” Terezi declared, cutting through the babble. “If we come to blows with these aliens, all is lost! If we fail to reach an alliance with these aliens, it is just the same! If they are willing to meet with Feferi half way, that will be an excellent starting point!”

“Then it’s decided! Have Nepeta prepare a scouter. Eridan, you’re coming with us.”

“What? Fef-”

“Let her know we’re on our way. Kanaya, keep monitoring the communication channels. We’ll leave an open line for you so you can observe the proceedings, everyone. Come on, Eridan!” Decided, Feferi turned on her heel and headed into the bowels of the ship.

Pausing briefly outside the helmsblock door a deck below the bridge, she thought of the occupant inside as she waited for Eridan to catch up. It wasn’t Sollux. She had never been able to find Sollux, or Aradia. But for them, and for trolls like them, she was willing to tear the empire in two.

She supposed that was an empty gesture, though. She had planned to do it anyway.

\----------------------

The Imperial defectors were willing to spill an amazing amount of information about their former homelands. Intelligence was on the fence over whether it was all trustworthy or not, but a lot of it seemed solid just from observation: it was impossible not to notice that the Empire was spreading at a ferocious pace, so the idea that the central driving factor was an impossible reproductive rate was terrifyingly plausable. Other insectoid races encounted by the Alliance also had fairly high rates of reproduction, but nothing on the scale proposed by the Alternians. The discovery of new habitable planets to host the mother grubs as a central driving factor seemed to have had an exponential boosting effect on their rate of reproduction, as, no longer cramped by the pheremone presence of other Mothers, the grubs on new planets had a much higher rate of egg production until once again equalizing out, and then spreading once more to a new planet, until there was the output of nearly 100 inhabited systems pushing outward in search of new lands for new Mothers, and then 1000, and ever increasing, swallowing everything in their path.

It painted a far grimmer picture of the situation than Jane Crocker could have imagined. Face to face with this emissary of a splinter group of Alternians, she weighed her options carefully.

“And what happens,” she asked after a moment, “to those civilizations that already inhabit a system?”

“Whal———E.” The young Heiress accross the table from her flexed her sharp claws into the surface, leaving small scratches. “If they’re useful, they might be kept around. If not …”

“We cull em,” her body guard interrupted.

No remorse in his tone, Jane noted. No remorse for the unknown numbers of civilizations destroyed and people slaughtered in their expansion. Though perhaps she was reading him wrong. Wait until the data is analyzed, she reminded herself.

Jane leaned back, tapped one finger on the table. “And what is your purpose in coming to us?”

Feferi grinned, revealing far too many needlelike teeth. “Alliance! You are a representative of an interspecies alliance, are you not? I, and those who follow you, seek shelter within your borders and offer in exchange our military aid and information”

Jane shook her head, leaned forward. “But why?”

“I just said why.”

“No, that’s not what I’m asking. Why are you willing to go against your own people in joining with us instead of invading and taking by force?”

Feferi leaned back, her face flickering with impossible to read emotions. The Alternian defectors were so humanoid Jane was hard pressed to not assign them meanings: guilt, surprise, anxiety maybe? Impossible to say, she reminded herself. They did not have enough data yet to interpret body language.

“I will be completely honest,” the Alternian said finally. “I am hoping for aid in overthrowing the current Empress. I cannot do it on my own as of now: I have neither the experience nor the strength to survive a challenge for the throne. I am hoping for either a chance to shelter until I have the necessary experience to win it in a fair challenge, or a chance to use alternate means to take it by force.”

Jane felt everything stiffen inside her. Behind her, she heard both Dirk and Rose shift forward. “That’s quite the undertaking you are proposing,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “What makes you think the Alliance has even half the military strength your information suggests will be necessary, much less the inclination to enter into possible war with your Empire simply to put a different tyrant in charge?” Dangerous, she thought, laying all your cards on the table like this. Dangerous for you, dangerous for them.


End file.
